


By the side of love

by persephx



Series: glimbow week 2020 [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Best Friend Squad (She-Ra), Catra and Glimmer friendship, Established Relationship, F/M, Glimbow Centric, Glimbow week, Post Season 5, Post-Series, a little bit of ooc catra, also catra and bow friendship, but that's because she's gone to therapy, sick glimmer, worried bow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26286946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephx/pseuds/persephx
Summary: Glimmer is sick. Bow is worried. Catra wants to help.-fic for the prompt of illnes/injury of the 2020 glimbow week :)
Relationships: Bow & Catra (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Glimmer (She-Ra)
Series: glimbow week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909954
Comments: 1
Kudos: 51
Collections: Glimbow Week 2020





	By the side of love

Bow looked at Glimmer and bit his lip nervously. He could feel the tiredness pulling him to sleep, but he couldn’t let himself fall for it. He had to look after Glimmer. He had to keep himself awake in case something happened to her. He had to stay with her.

“Nothing is going to happen if you go to sleep” Adora had tried to tell him.

And he knew, okay? On a logical level, he knew. But at the same time, there was something about seeing Glimmer so pale, so weak, that was making him uneasy. She looked so sick that leaving her would have felt like betrayal. The war had ended, they were supposedly safe, but there was not going to be a time when Bow stopped covering Glimmer’s back.

There was a knock on the door that brought him back to reality, and Spinnerella walked into the room. “I brought soup,” she said, showing him the purple bowl. There was steam coming from it and it smelled amazing. It made Bow’s stomach churn. He wasn’t sick, but he wasn’t taking the best care of himself either. The thanked her and took the bowl from her. As Spinnerella left the room, Bow shook Glimmer’s shoulder softly, trying to pull her gently from her sleep. She opened her eyes and hummed brokenly.

“Hey there,” he said softly. She hummed again as an answer. She hadn’t been speaking much those past few days, so it didn’t surprise him that she didn’t have any words for him then. “I have soup.”

She mumbled something that could have been translated to “I don’t want soup.”

He couldn’t hold back his smile. “Spinnerella made it for you, it would be incredibly rude if you refused it.” That didn’t convince her, and it would have made his smile waver, but it wasn’t the first time this had happened. “You need to eat,” he told her, and, at her pout, he let out a soft chuckle. He brough his hand to her cheek and sighed. “C’mon, Glim, you need to eat something, you can go to sleep again after, okay?”

She whined but sat up and took the bowl from Bow’s hands. It was a small victory that Bow celebrated silently; she hadn’t been able to hold stuff the day before, too weak for doing things by herself. If she could pick up her bowl and hold it herself, that had to mean that she was getting better. He still couldn’t see any real change in how she looked; she still looked tired, stuffy and feverish. He supposed recovery wasn’t going to happen from one day to the other, but these past few days had been the worst that Bow had ever seen Glimmer, and, honestly, he was scared.

She ate in silence and sighed loudly when she finished her food. The fact that she finished the whole bowl without any complaints gave Bow a little bit of hope that he really needed in that moment. He had been having to force her to eat, and he despised the feeling of her sad eyes on him. He hated it. It also meant that she was starting to be able to stomach her food better. She might not have been hungry, but she had at least been able to eat the whole thing.

“You want anything else?” he asked, once she had handed him the bowl.

“Yeah, for you to get some sleep.”

The self-satisfied smile that Glimmer was sporting meant she was proud of her rebuttal, which also showed how gone she was —if she thought that had been good, she must have been more on world of dreams than in reality. Bow supposed he must have really looked tired if she could tell that he needed sleep in the state she was in. And he _was_ tired. He wanted to sleep, but he hadn’t really been able to do so since Glimmer had fallen ill. He also didn’t want to leave her alone, not even if she seemed to —maybe— be getting better.

“Make some room for me, then.”

Glimmer frowned and grumbled. She did not move. “You are gonna get sick if you sleep with me.”

“I don’t care,” he answered decisively. Sleeping with her was the one way that he could fall asleep and not feel the guilt of leaving her.

“I do. You’re grumpy when you’re sick.”

That startled an unexpected laugh out of Bow. “And you are one to talk,” he pointed out with raised eyebrows. If he was grumpy when he was sick, Glimmer was in a whole other league. She had been all whines and grumbles and, even though Bow could find it funny when he saw that Glimmer was better, it had been one of the things that had worried him the most. She had seemed so outside of the real world…

There was a knock on the door that got their attention. As Bow stood up to get it, Glimmer let herself fall back into a lying position, but she fought to keep her eyes opened. On the other side of the door was Catra, looking a little bit uncomfortable, shifty.

“Is something wrong?” Bow asked instantly, worry flashing through his body. It wouldn’t have surprised him if someone else —specially Adora, after all the time she had spent with Glimmer— had also gotten sick.

“Not really,” Catra answered, faking a nonchalant tone. Once they had started to spend more time together, Bow had gotten better at recognizing Catra’s tones, especially when she faked indifference. “I came to see how Sparkles was.”

“I’m fine,” came as a muffled answer from the bed.

Bow looked back to see Glimmer almost asleep and curled up in a ball. She did not look _fine_. Maybe it was the soup that made her sleepy, but she looked to be dying to get some more sleep.

Catra looked at Bow with a raised eyebrow and a smirk that let visible one of her fangs. “And you, Arrow Boy?”

He rolled his eyes at the name. “Also fine.”

And at that, Catra raised both of her eyebrows.

“He’s not!” Glimmer snitched from her bed. The words came louder than her other interjection, but they sounded just as slurred.

“I’m a little bit tired,” he ended up admitting.

His friend looked him up and down and then let herself into the room. She scrunched her nose but sat in the chair next to Glimmer’s bed. “Go to bed, Bow. I’ll keep guard over the princess here.”

“Queen,” Glimmer corrected.

Neither of them acknowledged her.

“I don’t—”

“If you don’t sleep, it’s you who’s gonna end up getting sick. You need to sleep. You don’t want Glimmer to be alone, and she’s not going to be, I’ll be here until you come back _rested_ ,” she made a point of emphasizing the word ‘rested’, which made sense, because Bow could have slept for a couple of hours and then gone back to the room to be with Glimmer. “We’ll be fine without your watchful eye, dude, really.”

“We’ll be fine!” almost-asleep Glimmer added. She had dropped the pretense of staying awake and she had let her eyes close. She would be out in a matter of seconds, Bow thought, and he felt the sort of jealousy that meant that he really was too tired to be there.

“Okay,” he ended up saying. “I’ll— Well. I’ll go to my old room. If _anything_ happens, you’ll tell me, right?”

Catra nodded, more solemnly than what Bow would have ever expected from her. “I promise, Bow. Go to sleep.”

After a couple of seconds of hesitation, he nodded and left the room. He hadn’t even had the chance to take one step away when Catra opened the door and poked her head out in the corridor.

“Hey,” she said in a whisper. “I just wanted to say that Glimmer is going to be alright. She’s strong and she’ll get through this.”

“I know.”

And, really, logically speaking, he did know. But fear wasn’t always logical.

“Yeah, but it’s hard not to worry, isn’t it?” Catra sighed. She looked as uncomfortable as she always did when feelings were discussed. “It’s normal to worry about your loved ones. But you need to _know_ that she’s going to be okay. The same way I know that you will get back every time you go to a diplomatic trip with Glimmer. The same way I know Adora is going to come back from the Whispering Woods in one piece every time she goes out on an adventure.”

Bow nodded, not knowing what to say. It had been the first time that Catra had outright said that she cared for Bow and Glimmer. She showed it, most of the time, with small actions, but she had never actually worded it. It made Bow want to jump to hug her, but he knew she would _not_ react well to that. Instead, he grabbed her hand and squeezed.

“She’s gonna be alright.”

“Thank you, Cat.”

Catra’s soft expression quickly turned into her normal annoyed-at-the-world one. “You’re not making _that_ a thing.” Her tone was decisive, but Bow could see the rise in the corner of her mouth.

“Sure thing.”

“Bow.”

“Cat.”

He left the corridor before she could find something to throw at him and went to his old room. It had been months since he had moved out from it to sleep with Glimmer, and he didn’t exactly miss it, but he was excited to be there again. That had been the first space he hadn’t had to share with anyone. Not his siblings. Not his dads. Not his dads’ weird stuff. The room had been his and it had been him who chose who could enter in it, something Glimmer had always respected.

As soon as he got there, he faceplanted in the bed and fell asleep instantly, all the exhaustion of the last week finally catching up to him. He woke up thirteen hours later and rushed to Glimmer’s room only to find her laughing with Catra and Adora. His heart seemed to beat at a normal speed for the first time in forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr!](https://persephx.tumblr.com/)


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